Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: freaked out
  • Music: Nothing at the moment.

Error error error.

Did you know that a Microsoft Word error can not only crash your file, it can delete it?

The whole file?

The whole four hundred page novel file?

The whole four hundred page, no backups from this week file?

Pardon me while I go non-linear.
Tags: cranky blonde is cranky, hysteria, state of the blonde
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 47 comments
...go 1 level up... Expand

kyra_neko_rei

March 11 2009, 03:00:08 UTC 8 years ago

Oh, gods, that is worse.

My chemistry professor's laptop was stolen out of his office when he stepped down the hall to the printer to retrieve his (multiple-hundred-pages) tenure-request documentation, which he had just, for the first time, printed. No other backups.

This is why I have a love affair with flash drives.

scholarinexile

March 11 2009, 04:33:51 UTC 8 years ago

Alas, I was in the process of putting my thesis on a flash drive when it was deleted. That incident set back my entire graduate career a good six months and was likely a factor in my failure to get into a the Ph.D. program I wanted, and thus has affected the course of my life ever since. Granted, I like my life right now and wouldn't have ended up where I am had I gone on to my Ph.D., so perhaps it was all for the best.

But as someone who writes fiction as well as doing science, I would consider the loss of that big a chunk of fiction far, far worse than the loss of a thesis. A master's thesis can be reconstituted from notes and texts. Fiction unrecorded elsewhere will likely never be the same no matter how you rebuild it. From where I'm sitting, Seanan has it worse than I did.

kyra_neko_rei

March 11 2009, 05:05:39 UTC 8 years ago

True, that.